Sunday marked the 25th anniversary of the start of NATO’s 78-day campaign of aerial aggression against Yugoslavia. Just three days in, the Yugoslav Army shot down a F-117 Nighthawk using a vintage Soviet missile.
Sputnik asked former US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski how such a thing could have happened, apart from Yugoslavia been cut into pieces by NATO.
On March 27, 1999, a Yugoslav air defense unit downed a US Air Force Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft using a Soviet-made S-125 Neva (NATO reporting name SA-3 Goa) SAM, making history and marking the first-ever destruction of a stealth aircraft in combat.
Introduced into service a little over four decades ago in late 1983, the last of the US Air Force’s F-117 fleet was consigned to semi-retirement just 25 years later in 2008.
Allegedly because new and better stealth aircraft had become available, but really because the plane was rendered instantaneously obsolete after being destroyed by a Soviet SAM designed in the 1950’s to take on second-generation jet fighters.
When first unveiled in the 1980’s, the Pentagon thought they had gotten their hands on a nearly invincible invisible aircraft, with the $111 million F-117 featuring a futuristic and high-tech radar-wave scattering paint job, unique angular shape and special radar-resistant coating.
Among other things, the jet was meant to penetrate deep into the USSR’s air defenses and carry out nuclear strikes if the Cold War ever went hot.
In the popular imagination, US 80’s stealth technology, including the F-117 and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, were presented as something akin to super-weapons – capable of winning a war against Moscow single-handedly.
That sense of smug superiority at the Pentagon evaporated overnight twenty-five years ago, when the 3rd Battery of the 250th Missile Brigade of the Yugoslav Air Defense Forces commanded by Colonel Zoltan Dani took up duty near Buđanovci, Serbia, Yugoslavia.
Dani and his men monitored the F-117 during flight using meter-range radar, which proved capable of detecting the stealth aircraft more easily than expected.
It was only when the aircraft was 15 meters away that I commanded to lock on the target and ordered Senad Muminovich, the gunner, to press the launch button, and the missile was fired, Dani recalled in an interview with Sputnik in 2019.
The footage of Buđanovci residents dancing on the wings of the downed aircraft while chanting “Sorry, we didn’t know it was invisible” spread like wildfire across the world and became a major blow for the NATO coalition, giving Yugoslavs the strength to continue resisting the West’s aggression.
Over 20 years later, in December 2020, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Hainline, another F-117 pilot who took part in the bombing of Yugoslavia, revealed that a second F-117 piloted by his wing-man had been hit by Yugoslav anti-aircraft fire, taking serious damage but managing to limp back to base.
I vaguely recall this as being a shock – it was the premier stealth aircraft of the day, retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and former senior DoD analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik, recalling the March 27, 1999 incident.
After all, most Americans and those in the military believed that it was solely and mainly a recognition of US military and technological superiority that caused the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Yugoslavia itself was viewed as a ‘safe’ war against a weak enemy,” with the aerial aggression against it meant to ‘demonstrate US values’ “rather than fighting to preserve or win anything.
Otherwise, unfortunately, the decades since the incident have changed little in the US approach to using its military establishment around the world, beyond millions of dead people in many other countries.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point NATO Military Invasion News 2024.
Thia is what NATO did to Yugoslavia (1999), and later with Libya (2010), later the hostile event in Syria was double-crossed by Russia with help of Iran. Now the Zionist themselves are falling victim to military might in Ukraine and Israel.
I have several books on military aircraft from a defunct airbase extolling the virtues of Western aircraft and condemning Soviet & Russian aircraft , they now look a bit silly due to Russia showing that they are all hype and show instead of all conquering vehicles of war . For example the other American special spy and assault plane needs a re-coating every 50 hours and both it and the above plane are easily spotted due to Russian advances in radar which were always ahead of the USA/UK. As noticed all those military victories were due to fighting much lesser… Read more »